Landscapes

I live in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, an area blessed with beautiful
landscape; gorgeous mountain vistas, open fields, sparkling streams. I love
these views but I’m also drawn to painting the close up textures and colors of
tangled brush and weeds. These landscapes speak to things hidden; another world
of a darker beauty.

Red Tree

Red Glimmer

Burning Bushes in Winter

Field Light

Winterscape

Cricket Night

Where The Sky Drops Low

Esther's Milkweed

Bittersweet with Crow

Memory Of The Vly

Sculptures

Empty Hive

Gold Foot

Meeting with the Chief

Princess Bat with Shadow

The Weight of Color

Cutouts

My Cut Out collages often portray
the lives of fantasy characters I’ve created, such as the baby gazers. They are
babies who have extreme adventures that sometimes get out of control. The
gazers are drawn to living on the edge.

I start
with papers I paint or print on a small press. I also incorporate fabric.
Sometimes I have an image in mind and at other times the images pop out without
much conscious thought as I cut into the paper. Sometimes I’ll cut out a figure
or shape that I like but don’t have a world for. I tape it to a large sheet of
paper and put it on the studio wall where I can look at it. Little by little it
comes together.

As my
paintings become more abstract my cut-outs become more narrative. They inform
and balance each other.

The Merkids Have Two Moms

Whale Talk

Catholic Girl In Tahiti

Yearnings Of The Heart

The Great Crow Escape

Baby Gazers In The Unicorn Forest

Baby Gazers Ride The Narwhales

Flowers

A
lot has been said about artists painting flowers and it has sometimes been
negative. Sir Joshua Reynolds, an influential British artist and theorist of
the eighteenth century said ‘No mature artist should waste his brush on the
lowly subject of flowers.’ I suspect his view was influenced by flower painting
being a common pursuit for women of that time.

Georgia O’Keefe blew the idea of flower painting by women
being a lower art wide open. She warned viewers not to interpret her work with
this statement “When you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your
own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if
I think and see what you think and see of the flower and I don’t’. Tough woman,
Georgia.

I love to
paint flowers because I feel so free when I do it. Every spring I paint the
same flowers in my garden that I have painted year after year. Irises, poppies,
peonies and spider wort. They are like old friends who appear for a short while
and have to leave. I grab my watercolors and paper and sit in front of the garden
and commune and record before they’re gone.

Irises With Ghost Tree

Dark Peony

Poppies and Sun

Peonies, Poppies and Dragonfly

Peony Shadow

A Lively trio

The Calligraphy of Flowers

Opening, Opening, Opening

Just Opened

Peony with Iris

Solo

Inter-Species

My recent work is rooted in the seemingly disparate areas of ancient mythology and scientific research on interspecies and intra species communication that has gained momentum in recent years. Although most research is done with primates, there is evidence of humans communicating with many other animals including wolves, foxes, crows and whales. Our new understanding of animals allows connections with them that bring a restorative balance to the human psyche.

I’ve long been drawn to myths that explore relationships between humans and animals. In these tales people communicate with animals, accept guidance, and even designate them as gods. Mythology and scientific research both state that clear communication exists between animals and humans, and also between animals of the same and different species. My paintings on interspecies communication comprise my own personal contemporary myths. Viewers enter a world where diverse creatures are connected.

Crow and Crowboy Sing Their Secret Song

There's Nothing To Be Afraid Of

Lulu and Lola and The Wolf

Hidden By Friends

Wolf, Woman, Crow

Carry the Fox

Foxes

I'm privileged to live in an area where I frequently see foxes and have painted them for years. In the Spring we visited Provincetown. Walking through the dunes next to the ocean
we had fleeting glimpses of red foxes. Later I read in the local paper
that many people in town were supportive of the foxes being there. They appreciated
these beautiful animals. I began a new series I call Dune Fox. Some of those are in this gallery.

Fox In A Thunderstorm

Gathering On The Dunes

Midnight Hunters

Meeting

Fox and Crow

Forest Foxes

Golden Fox

Fox on High

Animals

When I create art with
animals as the main theme, I enter the folds of an ancient tribe. The oldest
art in the world contains animal figures. Cave paintings in Spain and France, Native American pictographs and Egyptian
hieroglyphics depict animals as part of everyday life and also as sacred
symbols. Europeans in the middle ages compiled illustrated books called
bestiaries that spoke to the spiritual and magical qualities of animals. Myths
and legends inspired by animals became part of a spiritual framework. They
helped our ancestors grapple with those eternal questions we are still asking,
‘Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?’

Arctic Sunset

Wolf With Baby

Every Mother's Child

Raised by Wolves

Courtauda and the Twins

The paintings in this gallery follow the story I wrote about Courtauda, a Canadian gray
wolf, and Lulu and Lola, twin girls who became Courtauda’s foster daughters and
lived under the mantle of her protection for more than a year.

One spring morning
Lulu and Lola’s father was flying his private plane, with the girls and their
mother as passengers, from the United
States to their home in Canada. Just as the plane passed over Canada’s great
boreal forest, an enormous area covering millions of acres, the plane developed
engine trouble. He struggled valiantly to save them but the plane crash landed,
killing both of the twins’ human parents. The little girls, two years old at
that time, were asleep in the back of the plane and were miraculously unharmed.
They woke, discovered their parents still as stones, and climbed out the open
door of the plane. The little girls found themselves in a beautiful glade
surrounded by tall trees with the sun shining through their tops. They made
their way into the woods, wandering until they grew tired and hungry. Lola
began to cry and Lulu joined in. Perhaps it was their cries that signaled
Courtauda. The gray wolf had given birth just days before and sadly all four of
her pups died within hours. She was walking slowing through the forest, both grief-stricken
and sore, as her teats were still full of milk that was meant for her pups.

Courtauda
stepped through the underbrush and saw two little creatures looking at her with
awe. She approached them quietly and lay down close to them. Soon the twins
followed their natural instincts and were suckling on Courtauda.

The little girls
and the wolf were together for many months before they were found by their
mother’s twin sister, Esmeralda, a naturalist who had never given up on
searching for her sister and her family. Esmeralda had great respect for wolves
and recognized that Courtauda was like a mother to the girls. Lulu and Lola
went back to civilization and lived with their aunt but every summer Esmeralda
brought the girls back to spend time with Courtauda, their foster mother, and
the rest of the pack that had adopted them when they were in need. Once they were sixteen they went on their own
and camped near their pack for the whole summer.

One sad day, when
the twins were grown women, Lola arrived to discover Courtauda was dying. She
arrived in time to bid goodbye to her loving wolf mother and mourn her passing
with their pack.